


Hesitant Skeletons

by Antichthon



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 01:38:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17458148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antichthon/pseuds/Antichthon
Summary: We all know the story of the seven birds and their century-long journey, but how would things have changed for a certain elven wizard if he'd had just one more person to share the adventure with?A story in which Kravitz and Taako are soulmates, and he's reincarnated and born anew in every cycle featuring an inhabited world, though  he retains no memories of Taako and their past relationships, but Taako, being brought back to the same state in which he was when they first left their homeworld, remembers each year spent with Kravitz, his soulmate with whom he must build a new relationship each time, during their hundred year journey.





	Hesitant Skeletons

**Author's Note:**

> Much of this work, since it is based on the stolen century and will encompass all the same things, will be lifted straight from the podcast's transcript, mainly large sections of spoken words (such as Dav's speech at the conference, and reporter questions and responses) will be taken word for word from the podcast. All characters, ideas, and plot points (aside from the obvious of Kravitz being reincarnated in each cycle) belong to Griffin and the other McElboys.

The Institute of Planar Research and Exploration was, for lack of a better explanation, just a simple job opportunity for Taako at first. Sure, he and Lup finally had a place to call their own, and a real means of income for the first time in their lives, but it had just been that - a job. Of course, over their time at the academy, they'd improved upon their skills and actually enjoyed themselves in doing so, and once they'd joined the institute, which came as no shock to either of them - they'd both graduated with some of the highest scores the academy had ever seen - they became more comfortable in the security and comfort that the institute had given them. Everybody who knew the twins at all knew that they'd had a rough life, growing up on the road with no real home, and what the two did in their day to day lives never strayed from the routines they'd stuck to while growing up. They often forewent the more comfortable option of the beds provided to them as members of the institute, and slept together in a pile of blankets on the floor as they'd always done as children. Lup tended to stick to small portions at each meal like she'd always done, but unlike his sister, Taako often gorged himself on the delicacies that he'd never been able to enjoy before. But the two never took anything they had for granted. They knew that things like this didn't always last, so they enjoyed themselves while they had the time.

 

Course, over the years, as the institute grew, the twins developed relationships other than the one between themselves, though their bond always remained the strongest and most important. Lup found an easy friend in Barry, another member of the institute - their head science officer, in fact, who was a magic user like herself. They grew close, discussing things like casting techniques and the different aspects of their preferred school of magic, hers being pyromancy, and his, surprisingly for someone as, well, bland as he was - necromancy. Granted, he never practiced it of course, it was illegal in most places, so instead he sent his time studying any materials kept by the institute and analyzing old necromantic practices. Taako, on the other hand, didn't bond well with others as quickly as Lup did, but in time, he did find someone he felt comfortable being around. 

 

Kravitz was one of the newer members of the institute, having joined only after the institute had received better funding and promotion, due to finding the light of creation, requiring the institute to consider hiring more members to compensate for the influx of jobs created by projects involving the light. Kravtiz was, to put it lightly, an interesting person. He was one of the few people at the institute who was interested in researching the Astral plane. Aside from IPRE members, people often weren't interested in actually exploring what happens after death. Most people simply wanted to believe that loved ones who had passed on were in a better place, and left it at that. Nobody really wanted to delve into what it was like for the souls of the deceased, for fear of learning that it might not be the perfect utopia that people make it out to be. But Kravitz was one of the few who really did want to know if it was a haven for kind souls and eternal punishment for those who were not perfect during their lives. 

 

For a very short while, Taako considered the two of them to be just friends, perhaps even a form of best friends (though not like he and Lup were), before their relationship eventually, and unavoidably, developed into one more physical, and then one that was more or less romantic, if that was the correct word to describe the type of connection the two had. Taako wouldn't say it was love (at least, not yet in his mind, though Kravitz would wholeheartedly disagree), but he deeply cared for the other man. Which made it much more difficult to say goodbye when only one of them was chosen to join the institute's very first expedition further out into the planar system. The ship built specifically for this mission was only made possible due to the light of creation's power, which made this expedition a once in a lifetime opportunity. Kravitz was disappointed, to say the least, when he hadn't been chosen, and more so when he learned that Taako had. Granted, it was only a two-month expedition, but the two didn't want to be separated, even for such a short amount of time. 

 

On the day before the expedition was set to begin, the institute held a public conference. It began with a video, projected onto a large screen in front of the even larger audience gathered in the town square.

 

_ “Everything begins, and I mean that quite literally, with the light of Creation. Imagine the power to realize anything your mind can conceive of on any scale, and then imagine that power given tangible form. It’s not the being that created our existence, but it may very well be the tool that that being used. _

_ It’s the paintbrush that illustrated the very first tree, it’s the yardstick that told the stars where to hang in the night sky. Somehow, the light of creation ended up in a place where it was probably was not intended to go: our world. The very world that it helped to shape. _

_ A year ago, the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration, the world’s premier collective of bright minds and adventurous spirits, recovered the light of creation. And in this past year, we’ve made immeasurable advancements in the fields of science and arcana, all culminating in tomorrow’s unprecedented voyage. _

_ Please, give a warm welcome to our brave explorers!” _

 

The video fades out and the lights come up, illuminating the seven figures on the stage, and the members of the institute are greeted with applause. Davenport, this mission’s captain, is standing at the podium ready to address the audience. He explains that the expedition will last two months, during which the seven members chosen will leave this world and the prime material plane, and make their way into the outer reaches of the planar system in hopes of finding what lies beyond it. Thanks to the light of creation, recovered just under a year ago, the institute was able to build a ship to reach this goal of exploring the other planes. Behind the stage, a large tarp is pulled off of the ship in question, and Davenport speaks again,

 

“This ship, the Starblaster—”

 

There’s a round of applause, but some people in the crowd speak among themselves in quiet, judgemental voices, because the name, well, it feels just a bit unorthodox.

 

_ “Star— Starblaster? Did he say—did he say Starblaster?” _

 

Captain Davenport continues to speak, and he says, “It doesn’t run on any kind of fuel you’ve ever heard of. It doesn’t run on any kind of fuel at all, actually. This was the biggest discovery that the light of creation allowed us to harness. That ring powers the ship using Bonds. What we discovered while studying the light of creation’s power is that any two things in existence, from the whales in the sea to the dust in the air to every individual teaspoon in your kitchen cabinets back home are connected, somehow, by Bonds. It covers any number of observable phenomena, uh, magnetism and gravity, electro and covalent bonds, but there’s infinite unobservable threads holding the matter of our universe together. In a manner of speaking, the interpersonal connections that we share are a type of Bond, too. Emotion. Sympathy. You could call this a love boat, if you wanted to be extremely reductive. Bonds are what propel and power this ship, and it’s what’s going to allow us to go to places we’ve never even dreamed of.”

He pauses, and looks to the crowd below, clearly giving time for questions at this moment, and people from the crowd start speaking up. 

 

“Hey, my name is Rod Peterwax from The Freedom Constitutional, uh, who’s paying for this thing? Us, the taxpayers? Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

 

“Well, good science pays for itself,” Davenport responds. “Who knows what we’re gonna discover out there, uh, y’know we’ve already made several exciting discoveries just in building the ship that we’re gonna be able to sort of turn into exciting products.”

“Uh, Captain Davenport? Clomp Hoofman, Minotaur Monthly, um, quick question: what’s your end—? What are you hoping to discover out on the reaches of this, uh, planar— what’d you call it?”

 

“Uh, just, the outskirts of our planar system and that’s a great question, I’m gonna go to let our sort of science expert Barry Bluejeans up here to answer that question, Barry?”

 

And Barry Bluejeans, wearing his red uniform and his  _ crisp _ blue jeans goes up to the mic and says—

 

“Well, um, we don’t really know what’s out there beyond our planar system, so I don’t really, I don’t really know what we’re gonna find out there. There could be new forms of matter, new forms of energy, new worlds we could potentially inhabit, from a scientific perspective the possibilities are theoretically limitless and I’m just really—” And as he’s talking, Lup, who’s sitting next to Taako, kind of mutters under her breath, “Nerd alert!” And Barry gets kind of embarrassed, but continues to speak.

 

“Um. I’m just excited about the opportunity to get out there and find the new things to— to study it’s just really exciting.” And he goes and he sits down once he’s made his point. There’s a few hands that shoot up and Davenport points at someone in the crowd at random.

 

“Uh, yeah, I have a quick question! Uh, Wisp Blinkman from The Eye of the Beholder. What kind of weapons is this ship— are you worried about any kind of run-ins with any kind of  _ beings  _ out there in the void?” The man in the crowd says.

 

“We, we— the ship is not necessarily armed with, uh—, y’know, it’s called the Starblaster—Um, it’s called the Starblaster but it doesn’t—it’s not equipped with blasters of any kind, however, we do have a security officer on the ship, Magnus Burnsides. Maybe you could answer this one.” And Magnus leans forward in his seat when he hears his name.

 

“Yeah, what’s the question? What did you want— what was it? Sorry I wasn’t paying attention.”

 

“Are there any—uh, are there any weapons on board?”

 

And Magnus responds to this question with: “Uh, yeah, I’m the only weapon we need, alright, next question.”

 

“Uh, Jamie Green from Bugbear Times. Uh, can you tell us about, a little bit about the one lady in the back and what purpose she serves?”

 

Davenport walks back over to the mic and says: “Uh, well, Lucretia is going to be serving as our chronicler during this journey and hopefully she can get up here and talk about what that means.” And Lucretia walks up to the mic and she’s a little bit more nervous in this environment than everybody else has been so far, and she says:

 

“Well, uh, hi, my name is Lucretia. I will be the chronicler on this journey which… means I’m going to write down everything that happens up there. I’m uh, I’m a biographer by trade. You wouldn’t know my name but I’ve almost certainly ghost-written something that you’ve read and this—” She motions back to the rest of the crew and the ship and continues, “This just, this seems like um, this seems like a story worth telling well.”

 

One more of the reporters in the crowd raises their hand and speaks up once Davenport motions to them.

 

“Hi, I’d like to get a quote from Lup as well. Lup, what made you want to, hm, are you really comfortable with leaving this world behind for such a long stretch of time?” She approaches the microphone and folds her hands behind her back, giving a small shrug before saying anything. 

 

“Well, I, uh. I did this one already. I did this world and kind of… crushed it, so, I guess I’m excited for opportunities to expand the ol’ brand as it were. So yeah, I’m pretty psyched to get off this stink-planet and see what else is out there.” And Lup makes her way back to her seat, where Magnus puts his hand up for a high-five, and she of course obliges and smacks her hand against his much larger one. But then she like runs back up to the mic and grabs it from its stand, and she gets really close to it and just  _ shouts _ :

 

“ALSO!  _ Greg Grimaldis _ : You owe me fifteen dollars and I aim to collect! You better believe,  _ Greg Grimaldis!”  _ and she extends her arm and Davenport speaks up from behind her, “Please don’t drop the—” And she drops the mic to the floor with a clatter. Davenport sighs, and puts the mic back up and sort of dismisses the audience, and there’s another round of applause as the seven members onstage make their way down into the street. Davenport gives the other six a brief debriefing - the ship will leave at 0800 the next morning, and they’d better not be late.

 

The seven of them split up to spend their evening as they want. Davenport goes home for a good nights rest before the mission tomorrow morning. The rest find a seedy dive bar, one in which they most likely won't be recognized, and spend a good few hours there. The twins spend their time hustling people at pool, as they’ve done in nearly every other bar they’ve ever visited, and, considering they’ll be gone for the next two months and won't have any need for money, and play for other people’s clothes that night, though they only leave with a pair of shoes. Soon after they’ve arrived, a fight breaks out, and Lucretia’s sitting in the thick of things, two enchanted journals floating in front of her, chronicling away with both hands. Merle squirrels her and himself away behind the bar so that they’re not in danger of being injured in the crossfire of fists flying, though she keeps popping back up to watch and as Merle goes to pull her back down, a bottle gets thrown across the room and nicks him just above his eye going into his hairline. Magnus steps in to break up the fight, but the guy who started it gets a blow on him, and he shows up on the ship the next morning with a black eye.

 

The next morning comes with less fanfare than the apocalypse deserves. The crew arrives early to the Institute and there are nerves, and there are final checks, and there’s coffee and cake, and they all put on their uniforms, which are crisp and bright red with the institute’s have the emblem sewn into the left breast pocket that has the twelve planes, with IPRE stitched into them in the left breast pocket. Some of them, Merle, Lup, and Magnus with no shirt underneath, have jackets, and others, Barry, Lucretia and Davenport have robes. Taako is sporting a jacket on top of a robe.

 

The seven of them climb aboard the Starblaster, waving and smiling for the crowd below, which looks equal parts excited for your departure, but also nervous, because there is this storm hanging overhead, and it is motionless. And if the seven of them hadn’t been so focused and nervous about this mission, they would have noticed the unnatural stillness of this darkness in the sky, and the way that the colors seem to be slowly draining from the world around them, but they didn’t notice and carried on with the mission, standing on the deck as Davenport took the Starblaster up and through the storm and into the stars and past the stars, and as the ship’s bond engine kicks on, pulling them out of the prime material plane, that’s when they see  _ it, _ and that’s when the panic kicks in. A thirteenth plane, black and flecked with color, reaching down and into their world, it’s dark tendrils reaching around the ship to the world they’re flying away from, and Davenport tries and fails to contact the Institute, and he makes the call.

  
They’re escaping, and regrouping, and they’ll return when the time is right, when things are safer, and he makes evasive maneuvers to dodge those tendrils, and flies the ship far, far away, and everyone aboard watches as the planes and this entity that is attacking them, start to shrink behind them as they get farther and farther away. And out there, away from the planes, space is acting kind of strangely. The void between the planes is, well, where the expedition was supposed to take them from, but they knew that it shouldn’t appear to be trembling, wavy like the unstill surface of a lake. And as their home is consumed behind them, the ship passes through a threshold that they cannot see or comprehend, and time comes to a stop. The seven of them feel themselves being torn apart. They can see these sort of  _ projections  _ of themselves, all frozen in place on the deck of the Starblaster, all sort of firing outward from their bodies in all directions, just thousands of Taakos and Merles and Magnuses and Lups and all of them, just bursting away from themselves, frozen in place.


End file.
